"water birds." Koko, too, has generated
compound names to describe novelties. She
referred to a zebra as a "white tiger," a
Pinocchio doll as an "elephant baby," and a
mask as an "eye hat."
A memorable joke turned on one of
Koko's cleverer associations. Last winter,
Cindy Duggan was holding a jelly container
when Koko signed, "Do food."
"Do where, in your mouth?"
"Nose."
"Nose?"
"Fake mouth," said Koko, opening her
mouth and then licking the jelly container.
"Where's your fake mouth?" asked Cindy.
"Nose," repeated Koko.
The next day I asked Koko what was a
fake mouth, and she said, "Nose."
Koko displays remarkable mental gym
nastics in merging different signs to create
compound or composite words. For in
stance, she has made the sign for "Coke" su
perimposed on the sign for "love."
For
grapefruit-which she doesn't like-Koko
simultaneously made the signs for "frown"
and "drink," executing "drink" in the posi
tion of the sign for "fruit."
A Lot Still to Learn
Having worked only with Koko and Mi
chael, I'm not in a position to rank chimp and
gorilla in sign-language ability. However,
by such indicators as range of vocabulary,
frequency of utterance, and mean length of
utterance, Koko must be considered at least
the intellectual peer of the chimp.
After meeting Koko, Eugene Linden, au
thor of Apes, Men, andLanguage, comment
ed, "Compared to the sign-language-using
chimps, the gorilla is calmer and more delib
erate. Koko seems to resort to the sign lan
guage more often to express herself, and she
discusses a wider range of activities."
Even had I not come to know and love
Koko as a witty, sweet, and trusting person
ality, I cannot foresee terminating Project
Koko. Nothing indicates that Koko has
reached the limit of her learning capacities.
We have a great deal yet to learn from her.
Now there is the challenge of new areas
of language use. Professor Patrick Suppes
and his colleagues at Stanford's Institute for
Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences
have designed a keyboard-computer linkup
462
that permits Koko to talk through a speech
synthesizer by pressing buttons. Simulta
neously, all her utterances are transferred to
a computer data file.
I noticed early that Koko responded ap
propriately to things I said in English, and
often spontaneously translated spoken
phrases into sign. For example, when asked
in English, "Do you want a taste of butter?"
Koko responded, "Taste butter."
Now with the auditory keyboard, which
produces spoken words when she presses
keys, Koko can talk back as well as listen.
The 46 active keys bear the usual letters of
the alphabet and numbers. But in addition,
each key is painted with a simple, arbitrary
"Want to skateboard?" Penny asks Koko
with a recently coined sign that represents
two legs on a platform (above). Koko's
tight-lipped grimace indicates mild annoy
ance at the request. Koko will sit on the
board and scoot around the trailer, but she
does not like to stand on it, perhaps be
cause she has seen Penny fall several times.
Nevertheless, Penny maneuvers 130
pounds of unwilling gorilla to the skate
board (right). "She's wearing her devilish
grin," Penny explains, "and she's trying to
tickle me." Shortly after the picture was
taken, Koko stubbornly collapsed on the
floor, and that was that.
NationalGeographic,October1978